What Is Music?

Music is the art of using sounds and rhythms to convey emotions, ideas and stories. It can unite people – even if they are absorbed in their own thoughts or separate by distances – and inspire creativity and connection.

Music reflects and drives culture, with certain styles evolving alongside trends in society and wider cultural revolutions. The Renaissance, for example, saw a dramatic change in musical composition as polyphony – the layering of independent melodies – was adopted and widely accepted, bringing depth and richness to music. The invention of the printing press was equally revolutionary, allowing musical compositions to be printed and disseminated widely.

But a definition of music that relies on these concepts will miss the mark because they fail to take into account how profoundly music influences human behaviour and is shaped by society. This is because music is not simply an artifact that preternaturally talented people can produce, but is a way of being that can be learned by anyone who is willing to make the effort.

This means that the most useful definition of music is one that focuses on how it affects the listener. The human brain processes sound at multiple levels, from the basic pitch of a song to the specific timbre and quality of each note. This is why research has shown that listening to a piece of music activates overlapping areas of the brain, including the primary auditory cortex where basic pitch is processed and the limbic system that handles emotion.

Moreover, music is often formed alongside cultural and social movements that shape societies, and it can be an instrument of protest. The freedom songs of the civil rights movement helped break down barriers and built empathy across divides, while artists like Tupac and Biggie Smalls used their music to call out injustice.

Music can also encapsulate the cultural heritage of a place, with traditional folk and world music helping to preserve the heritage of cultures that have been lost or are at risk of disappearing. This is because many traditional and folk music has been passed down through generations orally, and this process has created a sense of ownership over the music that is being played.

It is also important to remember that while the basic elements of music can be abstracted into things like rythm and melody, there are other sounds that don’t have these elements. The sounds of nature, for instance, are not music because they cannot be defined in terms of these elements.

Another issue with the basic definition of music is that it fails to take into consideration how genres are formed. Musical genres are divided into categories in numerous ways and these often have a polarity, with classical music being classed as “art” music while pop is considered to be “popular”. This can lead to a proliferation of subgenres, fusion genres and micro genres that create an almost infinite number of different types of music.